Breeding dubia roaches can ensure an endless stream of nutrition for your beloved pet. But, if you have more pets to feed, you may need to buy your monthly quota to keep them full and save time.
Anyway, you should know how to breed dubia roaches and make a proper colony for them.
The Number of Dubia Roaches to Start With
Having too few or too many dubia roaches can be a wrong move. You can choose 100 dubia roaches in the starting. Furthermore, for a healthy and productive colony, you should not start with too few Dubias. It is because you certainly want your dubia colony to have loads of genetic diversity, and you also want the reproduction to happen quickly.
Create a Place to Keep Dubia Roaches
You can create your colony in a 10 gallon or larger aquarium or even a 40 qt or larger plastic tub. Though dubia roaches cannot climb or fly, it is better if you get a cover to keep them protected. Similarly, you can buy a screen cover for your aquarium, and if you go for plastic tubs, they mostly come with covers.
Next, you should make ventilation holes on your tub’s sides near the top to ensure proper ventilation. Once you have ventilation in the tub, it will help keep the enclosure dry, necessary for good dubia roach care.
Maintain Heat
Another thing you should know about how to breed dubia roaches is keeping them around 90 degrees F. You can get this temperature by using a heat cable, under tank heater, or a ceramic heat emitter. However, make sure that you use a thermostat or a dimmer lamp with the heater so that you don’t end up roasting your roaches or melt the plastic container.
Create a Place for Dubia Roaches to Stand
If you do not have any place for your dubia roaches to stand, they may end up crushing each other. Here you can use an egg crate. But make sure that you do not use any cartons because they mostly are treated with chemicals that are harmful to dubia roaches. Furthermore, 8 to 10 egg crates will be good enough for your dubia roach breeding.
Feed Dubia Roaches Properly for Good Breeding
Nutrition is one of the main foundations of good health and a healthy physical condition. Furthermore, it plays a role in the excellent productivity and breeding outcomes of your dubia roaches.
Once you give your roaches proper nutrition, your healthy dubia roaches will live longer, and females have larger broods. Hence, the babies will have lower mortality rates, and they develop faster to fertile adults.
Optimize Your Production Rate
If you want to optimize the production rates of dubia roaches, you should go for a ratio of nearly 3-5 females for every male in your roach colony. To preserve this ratio, you should feed either the elderly and larger males to your pets first.
Similarly, if you are feeding a huge number of pets, and you wish to optimize reproductive levels, then you can create three housing containers. You can choose one plastic container for nymphs, another for reproductive age intermediate-sized Dubias, and the last one for older non-reproducing roaches.
To sum up, since you now know how to breed dubia roaches and how to get started with your colonization of roaches, make sure you do not miss out on any important thing, and you check your colony frequently.